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Week 4 Assignment – Using Presentation Aids to Enhance Your Speech

Due by Saturday, 11:59 p.m. (MT) end of Week 4 (120 pts)

Learning Objectives Covered:

• LO 04.01 – Define and discuss six types of presentation aids and their purposes
• LO 04.02 – Define and apply the assertion/evidence format for slide design

Career Relevancy

As we discussed last week, career professionals need to be able to speak confidently and competently to co-workers, management, clients, and patients. This such a common job requirement, the Bureau of Labor Statistics lists public speaking or giving presentations as one of the most often required communication skills.

Background

Presentations are used for a variety of purposes. Most often, they are used to inform, teach, report, advertise, persuade, or inspire audience. Depending to the purpose of a presentation, its content, structure, and design may differ.

Purpose of informative presentations is to inform about events or demonstrate some products, services, or product functions. While teaching presentations demonstrate how to do certain things: operate a device/tool or implement new process. Reporting presentations, on the other hand, convey status report of a project or process.

Other common types of presentation in a business field are those that advertise, persuade, or inspire audience. Presentations focused on advertising target sales of products of services; persuasive presentations engage auditorium in decision making, while inspiring presentations engage into problem solving.

When type and purpose of presentation are selected, presentation slides need to be designed with that purpose in mind. Slide design approach known as assertion-evidence (AE), is often used in the professional field. What is AE approach? Alley (n.d.) provides a clear outline of what AE approach is:

This approach will help you to create better understood presentations, as evidenced by tests of audience comprehension. In addition, the approach will make your presentations more focused and help you to project more confidence.

In the assertion-evidence approach, you build your talk on messages (not topics) to tell a coherent and compelling story about your work. Those messages you then support with visual evidence (not bullet lists). In addition, you engage the audience by fashioning sentences on the spot, but after practice.

Presentations often contain visual elements that help to communicate a message or idea with less words. Those different visual elements are called presentation aids. Presentation aids include but are not limited to images/photographs, charts, tables, graphs, videos, audios, and special visual effects like animation.

Before you proceed with this assignment, please review the following videos that give excellent information about how to use other types of aids during your speech:

Video #1: Using Visual Aid Part 1

• Length: 11:07 min
• Learning Objective: LO 04.01 – Define and discuss six types of presentation aids and their purposes
• Content: Public Speaking Projects discusses how properly to use visual aid in presentations.
• Key Takeaways:
  • Select your visual aid careful as selecting a wrong type may ruin your presentation.
  • Avoid passing things through the audience
  • Know your technology
• URL:

Video #2: Using Visual Aid Part 2

• Length: 9:20 min
• Learning Objective: LO 04.01 – Define and discuss six types of presentation aids and their purposes
• Content: Public Speaking Projects discusses how properly to use visual aid in presentations.
• Key Takeaways:
  • Expect unexpected – be aware of “Murphy’s Law” (i.e. equipment breaks, web sites fails, etc.)
  • Practice with your presentation aids
  • Double check all legal guidelines
• URL:

References

Alle, M. (n.d.) Assertion-Evidence Approach. Retrieved form https://www.assertion-evidence.com/ (Links to an external site.)

Prompt

Part 1: After researching and reviewing the various types of presentation aids, decide which would be best-suited to add to the speech you gave last week. Justify your choice in one paragraph.

Part 2: Reflect on your experiences in this class.

• What did you learn about yourself and your strengths?
• How did you prepare?
• What do you wish you had done differently?
• What advice would you give students who are going to take this course?

Your complete submission should be a minimum of 400 words with one citation.